Steen, Tomas

Abstract [en]

The aim of this study was to search for a link between the subject pictorial studies in means of expression and the ability to communicate in written and spoken language. To do so findings in relevant literature and a few complementing theories was addressed to cast light on interviews made with teachers dedicated to the subject pictorial studies in a subject-integrated curriculum.

Interviews were conducted with nine teachers and all but one were teachers in the subject pictorial studies, spread across all of the nine grades in compulsory school. Informants were located in areas of socioeconomically high as well as low status, in central and densely populated areas as well as areas less densely populated. The diverse theoretical background consisted of semiotics, constructivist theory, social constructivist theory and genre theory. Theories and literature partly both contradicted and supported each other, depending on situation and circumstance.

No evident conclusion could be made that discriminated one affecting cause from another on speech or writing skills. Yet some of the informants stated that the subject pictorial studies, to some extent, could be used to stimulate communication in written and spoken language, while some informants did not. One example on how this could be carried out, given by one of the informants, was by letting the pupils initially express their own thoughts and theories by aesthetic means which, according to the informants, enriched the following expressions in written or spoken language.

Preferably future research should focus on classroom observations combined with interviews with language arts teachers as well as art teachers, and, in order to understand the perspective of the pupils, interviews with them as well.